Wild Country: the Ovens River

By Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman

It is believed that the water flowing through the Ovens River is the same water that has always been on Earth, arriving four and a half billion years ago as the solar system formed. Therefore, the water of the Ovens has moved through the capillaries of plants, nurtured new life in wombs, leisurely advanced through underground aquifers and lapped against tall ships, canoes and bulk carriers. Water records in its molecular architecture the pasts we may not be able to see or that have been actively erased. Therefore, to think with water - to think with the Ovens River - is to remember.

With impressive granite rocks and majestic river red gums, the Ovens River and its watershed are picturesque, making it a much-loved recreational site for camping, swimming, paddling, and fishing. Yet historical and current-day ecological impacts through mining, agriculture, and climate change have indelibly altered its landscape. This project explores the environmental history and social importance of the Ovens River and its watershed through archival images from the State Library, writing, participatory arts practice and documentation of performative fieldwork.

Wild Country grew out of the COVID-19 pandemic and its extensive lockdowns. Yearning for the river of her childhood, Clare embarked on a comprehensive research project. With backgrounds in art, performance and connections to the Ovens River, Clare and Heather collaborated to generate creative responses exploring the river and its tributaries by performing acts of care documented throughout this project.

We would like to acknowledge the Dhudhuroa, Taungurung, Waywurru, Gunaikurnai and Jaithmathang as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the upper Ovens River and we pay our deepest respects to Elders past and present. We would also like to acknowledge the other Aboriginal groups that have an ongoing connection to the region.

Exhibited at Wangaratta Gallery 2024, by Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman with Andrew Ferris, Scarlet Sykes Hesterman and Xander Reichard.

River Valley Costumes

Inspired by the clothes of the first settlers and the contemporary farm manager, these costumes reference the DDT that flowed through the land and water of the Ovens River through the colour yellow. Patchworked fabric with printed native grasses and detailed with golden quilting represents the loss of native grasses due to settler land use and land management, such as hooved animals, mining, dividing the land into farms and the deliberate disruption of vital cultural practices. Inside the pockets of the costume, native plants endemic to the Ovens Valley grow in recycled containers. The plants sit alongside photographs of the upper Ovens taken by Harry Langham between 1891-93 from the State Library of Victoria collection.

River Valley Costume, 2024 by Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman. Modified recycled suit jackets and pockets, dyed recycled sheets, screen-printing with embroidered gold thread. Photograph by Andrew Ferris.

All that is lost and sometimes found

These photographs were taken within a pine plantation beside the Ovens River. Plantation pine is of great economic value to the upper Ovens, and this section of land, with its undulating terrain, is marked by the telltale signs of mining. The artists wear a costume that articulates how the river has been environmentally impacted post colonisation. The costumes pockets hold native plants that would have once been endemic to the locale. Therefore, in this action, the artists reintroduce the native plant species that can no longer grow, or barely grow, beside the Ovens. The larger image is printed on pine sourced from the Myrtleford Mill, the processing plant for the pine plantation.

Feral Actions

Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman. Wild Country: Feral actions, 2024. 1080p, infinite loop. Videography by Scarlet Sykes Hesterman.

In this action, the artists converted the River Valley costumes to become agents of care, filling their pockets with rubbish and the introduced plant species that line the river’s banks. The Ovens River has an impressive history of volunteer-led environmental campaigning, from the anti-sludge campaigners, which grew out of the first gold rush, to the anti-dredge and DDT volunteers (1). Today volunteers regularly clean, replant and care for the river.

(1) See Lawrence, S and Davies, P 2019, Sludge, La Trobe University Press, Melbourne and Robertson, K 1973 Myrtleford: Gateway to the Alps, Rigby Limited, Hong Kong.

Clare McCracken and Heather Hesterman. *Reading Letters to the RIver in our River Vests,* 2024. Digital print on Ilford Gold, 100 x 130cm

River Letters

Communities members, prior and during the exhibition, wrote letters to the Ovens River. These letters explored a forgotten history, a memory or an aspiration for the river. In this action Clare and Heather read the letters to the river while wearing their River Vests; vests that were designed to explore the recreational and social importance of the river.